Catholic-Jewish relations for sure need some boost now we can see many fundamentalist groups trying to undermine such relations and trying to bring more extreme right-wing thoughts in the forefront. In Western Europe we might see again a growing anti-Semitism and a growing hate against Muslims. That hate is mostly triggered by fundamentalist faith-groups giving their 'religion' a bad name.
The world should always remember that the minority faith where people only wanted to honour Only One God Who created heaven and earth, suffered centuries of
persecution. The world was warned already in the old days, many centuries before Jesus was born, that those people were the chosen people of God, but would also have to suffer much because of their choice. Also Jeshua, the Nazarene Jew warned his followers they should know when they would like to follow him, they would be a target of spot and bullying. Followers of Christ would in case they originally did not belong to the People Israel, also be taken up in the Family of God. But that would mean they also as part of the Body of Christ, would be part of God's people and would have to suffer likewise. though they may become protected more than those who did not accept the Messiah.

The Jews would have to live in ghettos and face the horrors of the Holocaust. Christians were persecuted but Jews were more and still are persecuted and shunned.It is a pity the Jews have one distorted picture of the Christians, because they always see the majority of them being Trinitarians often raging against Jews. It is true when they say Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism, because Jeshua (Jesus Christ) was a Jew, who never intended to make an other religion. After the church leaders of followers of that Jew made a bond with the men in power they took on the Greek-roman cultur with its many gods and holy days. they made Jeshua part of a three-une god like in the pagan cultures and as one bigger group they formed Christendom that
became the main religion across Europe. It was that group which treated the tiny minority
that did not follow Jesus as a tri-une god with persecution, exclusion and expulsion. Many Christians and Jews found their death as other people who did not want to confirm to the doctrines of that church.

Archbishop Angelo Roncalliin Worl War II was using his wartime post as Vatican ambassador
in Istanbul to run a network of nuns, diplomats and other people to
issue forged visas and baptismal and immigration certificates to Jews
from the Balkans to get them to Turkey and then to British-mandate Palestine.Later as Pope John XXIII he modernised the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965),
whose landmark document "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Times) repudiated the
2,000-year-old concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of
Jesus.

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Inter-religious Affairs of American Jewish Committee, said:

"Nostra Aetate ushered in amazing changes in
Catholic-Jewish relations around the world, even if the degree to which
it was internalized depended on whether Catholics and Jews lived side by
side."

Today we can see a lesser nice site of that Roman Catholic Church which got several of its members really helping Jews out of love for the children of God. But some of them also could have taken action and used the situation to 'win more souls' for the 'good faith'.

A great many individual Catholics, priests, nuns, bishops, and others acted heroically to save Jews and to oppose Hitler. To pick one example among many,
Archbishop Jean-Geraud Saliege of Toulouse bluntly declared that ”the
Jews are our brothers, like so many others, and no Christian can forget
this fact.” The Archbishop said this from the pulpit, in 1942, in the
middle of occupied Europe. He was not alone in such heroism.

Unfortunately, as an institution the Catholic Church, particularly
Pope Pius XII, spectacularly failed. The Church bears general
responsibility and (in many cases) specific guilt both its failure to
intervene and for particular actions taken against Jews.

Not many Catholics shamed themselves for certain actions taken by their church against people of other faiths. Several Roman Catholics became right wing fighters against those who did not want to come to the real faith of the god son Jesus. All others where considered blasphemous, and the Jews traitors to God. Many in charge of that Roman Catholic Church did not want to react against the way some of their flock were thinking. For years the West could see what was going on in Germany, but not many reacted against the genocide taking place.

Pope Pius XII called Pastor Angelicus, was the most Marian Pope in Church history. Bäumer, Marienlexikon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As head of the Chruch you would think Popes Pius XI and Pius XII could do something against the Nazi doctrine, but they failed to plainly
condemn Nazism and specific genocide against Jews (and others). From historical sources we know that diplomats representing France, Poland, Brazil, the United
States, and Britain approached the Vatican more than once with the request that the
Pope specifically denounce Nazi crimes against Jews. British diplomat
Francis D’Arcy Osborne, wrote:

A policy of silence in regard to such offences against
the conscience of the world must necessarily involve a renunciation of
moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority
of the Vatican…

Terrible was it when after the war the Catholic Church did not enough to bring the Jewish kids back to their family or did not allow them to keep their faith. Instead they tried to keep them away from their faith.

Some misdeeds continued beyond the war. Jewish children were hidden
in Catholic homes or religious institutions during the war. When
children were baptized, the Church sometimes deliberately obstructed
their return to surviving Jewish relatives. As one notorious 1946 memorandum directed:

1) Avoid, as much as possible, responding in writing to Jewish authorities, but rather do it orally.

2) Each time a response is necessary, it is necessary to say that the
Church must conduct investigations in order to study each case
individually.

3) Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions
that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian
upbringing.

4) For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that
the Church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to
be abandoned by the Church or entrusted to any persons who have no
rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose
themselves. This, evidently, is for children who would not have been
baptized.

5) If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the
parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received
baptism they can be given back.

It is to be noted that this decision of the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father.

This stain can not be wiped out. It is a blot on the Roman Catholic Church its escutcheon. Trying to keep the children away from their original family and original faith, this intentionally done, is a sin. You may say the Church had a responsibility to those who it could save from the horror of the Nazi's, but it did not give them the right to take away all the grounds to restore their original faith.To claim those children who lost their family and who were baptised, was not respecting the will of the deceased family members. The parents would have loved to see their children saved in the faith, not given them over to an other religious group to have them unwillingly be reformed in that other faith.Naturally it would be wrong to take Pope Francis I accountable for what happened in the 1930s -1960s. He bears no personal stain for actions undertaken almost
seventy years ago.

Some Christians do not seem to like what he is doing the last few weeks, which shows how there are still too many Christians who do not want to see their connection with the Jews, and how many still consider a whole people guilty for what some of their folks did. It would be the same as the Jews would consider all Christians guilty for killing so many Jews. The same with the Muslims, too many Christian are generalising the Islamic community, equalising them all with those lunatic fundamentalists. You also could say it would be the same if we all would consider the Christians on the same line as some freaky fundamentalist Christians like the Westboro Church a.o.

We should welcome Pope Francis I his efforts to helpfully
mediate the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis even at a time when still a debt
remains unacknowledged and unpaid.
Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s director of
international interreligious affairs and former head of the IJCIC,
welcomed the Pope’s speech as conciliatory.

“Pope Francis is a very good friend of the Jewish people, and we
rejoice in the fact that he will continue to advance the path of his
predecessors in deepening the Catholic-Jewish relationship.”

Related articles

Bishop Williamson still chased by Jewish Lobby (rehmat1.com)Earlier this month, under pressure from the powerful Australian Jewish Lobby, Australian government of Tony Abbott banned Britain’s controversial Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson from entering the country.
In a 2009 interview, Bishop Williamson had denied that Nazis could
have killed six million Jews before and during the WW II. He said that
though Jews along with Christians and Gypsies were targeted by Nazis, no
one died in gas chambers as no gas chamber ever existed. Watch a video
below.

The Pope Just Invited Islam Into The Vatican, Christians Aghast (gopthedailydose.com)Pope Francis invited representatives of the two faiths – Peres and
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – to the prayer summit,
which will focus on peace among the often embattled monotheistic
religions.
The leaders will recite applicable passages from their respective holy books.
Peres confirmed the delegation representing Israel will include
influential citizens from the Jewish, Muslim, and Druze communities.
Abbas will reportedly likewise include Christians in his delegation.
Out of respect for Jewish religious culture, the gathering will not
be held in a venue dedicated to prayer but in an unadorned garden at the
Vatican. Viewers around the world will be able to witness the
interfaith event via a live broadcast.

What's Behind Pelosi's Attack on Archbishop Cordileone? (crisismagazine.com)Faithful America is a 501c (3) organization that has been very involved
in political activity during the past few years. Most recently, the
group spearheaded a petition drive
on Facebook and other social media decrying what they see as Archbishop
Cordileone’s “lending the church’s authority to their [National
Organization for Marriage] vitriol and hatred—and undermining Pope
Francis’s call for a more compassionate church.”

Pope says antisemitism 'not Christian' (thejc.com)Pope Francis, who previously served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires,
said that during his time in Argentina, Catholics and Jews “enjoyed each
other’s company.
“We were all enriched through encounters and dialogue. We welcomed
each other, and this helped all of us grow as people and as believers.”

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims and everybody hates the Jews.

In
this song, Lehrer expresses the truism that hatred for the Jew is
uniquely commonplace. The Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, blood libels,
pogroms, countless expulsions and the systematic murder of 6 million.The question is: Why? What lies behind these
millennium of hatred? Why has the undercurrent of anti-Semitism bubbled
and boiled and exploded against Jews everywhere, time and again
throughout history?In this 8-part seminar, we will examine the root reason for the world's longest hatred.

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Welcome

Welcome at this zone created by Marcus Ampe for the Belgian Free Christadelphians, where previous articles from the MSN Groups and Multiply are brought together and made available again to the general public. On 2012 October 26 this site came into development and new articles shall be added next to our main site and to the Christadelphian Ecclesia site: Christadelphian Ecclesia.You are welcome at that site to find more articles.

All who want to follow Jesus/Jehsua (Yeshua/Yahsua) from Nazareth, the Christ, the Messiah and wants to be united with people who sincerely want to keep to those teachings of this Masterteacher are welcome to share their love for Christ and their hope for the coming Kingdom.

The name 'Christadelphian' is compounded of two Greek words: 'christos' and 'adelphoi' and means 'brethren in Christ'.

This site is created by a Free Christadelphian only bounded to Jesus Christ. We are open to anybody who wants to share the brotherly love of Christ. Coming together by a common belief in 'the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ' (Acts 8:12).

In the older Multiply messages links to Multiply shall not always work from 2012 December 1, but you shall be able to find them by copying and pasting the title in the search machine. I am working on re-editing those links from 2005 onwards, so that they shall work in the future?

Free Brother in Christ.Having enjoyed a theatrical life as dancer, choreographer, choreologist, artistic director, balletmaster and teacher. Now retired but also part-time working at Brussels International Airport. Responsible for the Brothers in Christ or Christadelphians in Belgium.